


Things You Said

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM Scene, Canon Era, Canon Universe, Developing Relationship, Dom Cullen Rutherford, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Undertones, Established Relationship, Love Confessions, M/M, Sub Iron Bull, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:27:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: A series of prompt fills from Tumblr, based on a "things you said..." list. Each chapter has the prompt and any warnings that apply to it.





	1. G: things you said under the stars and in the grass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bull and Cullen take a moment alone at the Winter Palace.
> 
> Tags: Dom/sub (implied), developing relationship, canon setting

Behind him, the Orlesian court celebrates with a frenetic energy that sets Cullen’s teeth on edge. Glad as he is to have this mess resolved, mostly what he wants now is to be anywhere but here.

At least he’s no longer under assault from a dozen groping hands and pinching fingers.

The doors behind him swing open, letting heat and noise out to invade the quiet chill of this tiny balcony that he found as soon as Josephine took pity on him and allowed him to retreat to lick his wounds. It seemed the perfect place to hide when he claimed it: too out-of-the-way for those who want to be seen, and not private enough for those who want actual privacy and not the illusion of it. With all the lights in the ballroom, he only has to hold still to remain unnoticed in the darkness.

That plan may have just exploded in his face, as someone else is clearly seeking the same things he was, and now both of them will be forced to make awkward conversation while they try to pretend they didn’t want silence.

Except when he turns, a smile pasted unevenly into place, he finds himself nose to chest with the Iron Bull. He quells the impulse to step back–the balcony railing is right behind him–then quells the equally strong impulse to cross his arms over his chest. His fingers do clench hard around the hilt of his sword, but since the movement is hidden in the shadows, he allows himself that one small display of emotion.

Of all the people who could have invaded his privacy, the Iron Bull may very well be the one Cullen least wants to see. Ever since the Chargers joined the Inquisition, their commander has been a splinter under Cullen’s skin, though the fault isn’t Bull’s. He has always been respectful of their relative positions within the Inquisition, and has never been anything other than supportive of Cullen’s official role.

The problem is entirely unofficial, and entirely Cullen’s.

“Bull,” he says, his voice betraying none of that. “If you’re looking for the Inquisitor, I believe-”

“The Boss is dancing,” Bull says with a grin. Not that Cullen can see that grin very well, not when Bull is still standing so close. Too close. “I came looking for you, actually.”

“For me?” Cullen asks. His voice cracks very slightly, but at least it doesn’t squeak.

“For you,” Bull repeats. “I thought you might be ready for a break from all these assholes, same as me.”

“Tired of the ox-man jokes?” Cullen asks, with a great deal of sympathy.

“Oh, I’ve been tired of those for about twenty years,” Bull says easily. “I don’t even notice ‘em anymore. I’d actually take a few of those, if it meant one less person panting on my arm and all but begging me to conquer them.”

“I’ve heard you like conquering,” Cullen murmurs. Too late, he tries to catch the words back, biting down on his tongue until pain spikes through his whole face. The best he can manage is to not clap his hand over his mouth like a child.

Bull is laughing, fortunately. Or perhaps not fortunately, when he’s still standing too close. Because that laugh is soft, made intimate by the darkness around them, and all Cullen would have to do to touch him is stop holding himself back.

“Oh, I like conquering,” Bull agrees. “And I don’t mind playing the savage qunari if that’s what does it for you, but…” He shrugs, trails off.

 _He doesn’t mean “you” specifically,_  Cullen reminds his pounding heart.  _It’s just a word people use, it doesn’t actually mean **you**._

Cullen has been silent too long, and now he scrambles for something to say. “You prefer to conquer people who are aware you’re capable of something more?” And all right, not what he would have said if he’d had time to think about it, but there’s no taking it back now.

This time, Bull doesn’t laugh, just makes a thoughtful noise Cullen doesn’t know how to interpret. When the silence is too much, Cullen says, “My apologies, that was presumptuous of me.”

“Pretty accurate, I thought,” Bull says. “Just wasn’t expecting it from you.”

“Oh?” Cullen says, feeling reckless now that the words are out there. Maybe later he’ll blame it on the pounding of his heart, on the way his body is tense for a fight. “Why not?”

Bull leans forward, just a little, and Cullen flinches back, desperate to avoid even the smallest brush of Bull’s skin against his. “That’s why,” Bull says, leaning away again.

“Because I don’t want to be crowded, or pushed over a railing by accident?” Cullen demands, as if either of those had anything to do with his need to keep some distance between himself and Bull.

“Is that what that was?” Bull asks.

Before Cullen can answer, Bull wraps careful fingers around his wrist. The grip feels loose, but Cullen suspects that trying to pull away would accomplish nothing. He doesn’t try, even as he’s embarrassed by the way his heart beats faster now.

“Just want to make one thing clear,” Bull says. “I wasn’t surprised you’d noticed. I was surprised you said anything.”

Sweat is forming at the back of Cullen’s neck, and on his palms. He’s as overwarm as if he was still in the hall, dancing under all those avid, hungry eyes.

That thought finally pulls his gaze up to Bull’s, and yes, there’s hunger in it, too, but not the same kind he’s faced all evening. Underneath the hunger is laughter rather than calculation, and Cullen realizes that if he tried to pull away, it  _would_  accomplish something: Bull would let him go, give him back the quiet, solitary peace he had a little while ago.

Cullen’s gaze continues upward, to the stars glittering overhead. The garden stretches out below them, and his nose and mouth are full of the smell of green things growing, without the masking stench of perfume that clung to him before the breeze blew it away. Around his wrist, Bull’s hand is hot enough to burn.

“You still with me, Commander?”

Cullen stares up at the sky and breathes deeply. They saved an empire tonight, even if it was an Orlesian one. Is celebration so wrong? Is he truly required to deny himself everything, always?

With his free hand, Cullen reaches for Bull’s, trailing down the sleeve of the expensive silk jacket until he finds skin. It isn’t difficult to open Bull’s hand, to spread his curled fingers wide enough that Cullen’s wrist fits against his palm, mirror image to the steady grip Bull maintains on his other arm.

Bull closes his hand slowly, no frantic clutching as if to catch Cullen before he runs, just a slow increase in pressure until his fingers circle all the way around, overlapping his thumb against the inside of Cullen’s wrist.

“Look at me,” Bull says.

More than a little reluctant, Cullen obeys anyway, lowering his gaze from the sky to Bull’s mouth.

“No,” Bull says. “Look at  _me_.”

That’s harder, and Cullen has to take a slow breath before he can do it. Bull is measuring him, that one dark eye so intent Cullen almost looks away again.

After a while, Bull nods. “Not here,” he murmurs, without letting go of Cullen’s wrists.

“Too many eyes,” Cullen agrees. Speaking so quietly, it’s impossible to hear how his voice shakes. Or so he hopes. “But...we won’t be here forever. There’s always later.”

“Later,” Bull says, and the promise in that one word is enough to carry Cullen through the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [on Tumblr](https://dragonflies-and-katydids.tumblr.com/post/138869941537/bullcullen-6-please)


	2. M: things you didn't say at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bull can take a beating. Cullen shows his appreciation.
> 
> A little switch!Bull and some BDSM. Though the switching isn't readily apparent, because the scene is dom!Cullen and sub!Bull, but in my head, they're both switches.

Cullen shifts the whip to his other hand and shakes out his right arm, flexing his fingers as he watches the sharp rise and fall of Bull’s shoulders. They’ve been at this a while now, and Bull is tired, head bowed so low that the tips of his horns rest against the wall in front of him. His breaths are coming in rapid gasps, mixed with the occasional wet sound of his mouth opening and closing as he swallows.

The marks across his back are purple against his grey skin, and Cullen strokes a finger along one of them, his own hand trembling a little. He’s nearly as tired as Bull, but that isn’t the reason he’s shaking, nor is it the reason he can hardly breathe. It’s a fight to keep his voice level, to maintain the proper balance of authority and admiration and love.

“Good,” he murmurs. “Just a little longer.”

He pauses a moment, giving Bull a chance to say the watchword, but Bull only digs his fingers into the stone wall and waits. It’s the most beautiful thing Cullen’s ever seen, and it makes him ache with conflicting desires. He wants to kiss every one of the marks he’s made, feel the heat under his lips and taste where the skin has broken open, and at the same time, he wants to bring the whip down until it’s impossible to pick out a single mark among the rest.

Watching Bull stand ready to take more, Cullen almost says what he shouldn’t, almost thanks him for not using the watchword. Dangerous. Bull is in that strange place, here but not here, half lost to the Fade even as he reacts to everything Cullen says, and Cullen doesn’t want to influence him, to make him hesitate if they do push past that line. The point of the watchword is to be an escape, and Cullen hates the thought of doing anything that might block that escape if Bull needs it.

And yet, it’s a gift, the way he stands ready to take more after everything he’s already taken tonight. Cullen has dragged him between pleasure and pain so many times that the line has disappeared, erased by the blows of the whip and the touch of his hand on Bull’s cock. It seems the worst kind of ungrateful, not to thank him for it.

Cullen rests his hand on top of Bull’s head, right where the horns meet, and says, “Ten more. Count them off for me.”

Then he steps back and takes the whip in his right hand again. He can’t–-won’t–-thank Bull for not saying the watchword, but there are other ways he can honor that gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [on Tumblr](https://d-and-k-nsfw.tumblr.com/post/140424165303/things-you-didnt-say-at-all)


	3. G: things you said while we were driving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confessing to your friend-with-benefits that you love him is awkward. Doing it on the drive home from a funeral? Even worse.
> 
> Tags: fluff, love confessions, AU - modern

They’re not the words Cullen meant to say.

He’d meant to say something like, “Thank you for coming with me,” or maybe a sarcastic “Well, that was almost as much fun as I expected.” Or even a completely practical, “Where do you want to stop for dinner?” They’ve been on the road four hours now, the funeral eight hours in the past, and lunch is a distant, unpleasant memory of mayonnaise-y egg salad and congealing hot dish. Gratitude, or sarcasm, or practicality: any of them would have been fine.

But he didn’t say any of those things. Instead, he gave up on blindly watching the scenery outside the car, turned to Bull, and said, “I love you.”

The words are echoing in his ears now, along with a steady litany of  _shitshitshitshit_  because of all the times to say that, now has to be the worst. Bull will be nice about it–Bull is always nice, except when Cullen asks him not to be–but there’s only so nice he can be, now that Cullen has forced his hand. Bull will feel guilty about it, too, about rejecting him on the drive home from his grandfather’s funeral, and that just makes Cullen want to shrink until he disappears into the seat. With three little words, he’s managed to blow up a ten-year friendship  _and_  make all parties involved feel like complete shit.

 _Yay, me,_  he thinks, fingers curling into a fist on the leg of his jeans as he waits for Bull to say something.

Only, Bull doesn’t say anything. His hands on the wheel are as steady as ever, his eye still on the road. He has to have heard, but he’s doing such a good job of pretending he didn’t that Cullen almost doubts himself.

It’s hard to say whether the lack of acknowledgement is better or worse. On the one hand, it means they won’t be having this conversation with another six hours in the car yet to go. On the other hand, it means Cullen will get to anticipate that conversation for at least the next six hours, and probably more, because Bull will almost certainly insist on waiting until they’ve both had a good night’s sleep. As if Cullen will do anything but lie in bed staring at the ceiling, after this disaster.

He’d rather just rip the fucking band-aid off right now.

“Look,” he begins, but Bull’s hand on his knee stops him.

“Let’s stop and get something to eat, okay?” Bull says.

Cullen hesitates for a moment before saying, “Okay. I think there’s a McDonald’s at the next exit.” He saw the sign for it, just before he dropped his little bomb.

“Sounds good,” Bull says.

The next mile is tense, at least for Cullen, as if the air in the car is pressurized and ready to blow. Ten years. He’s just wrecked ten years of friendship, and almost five years of friends-with-benefits that somehow became friends-with-benefits-and-a-shared-lease that became friends-with-benefits-and-a-shared-lease-and-a-dog-or-maybe-two.

He almost makes a joke about joint custody arrangements for the dogs, but the words stick in his throat. If only certain other words had done the same.

The McDonald’s is busy at this hour, the very beginning of the dinner rush, but the truck stop beside it has plenty of parking, and Bull swings them into a place a little ways distant from everything else.

“Look,” Cullen starts again, as soon as Bull’s turned off the car. “I know you don’t feel the s-”

“Don’t tell me what I feel,” Bull says, in the calm, measured voice that means he’s fighting for control. “Because if I don’t know, how can you?”

That leaves Cullen gaping, his mind blank.

Bull is sitting like they’re still on the road: hands at two and ten on the steering wheel, eye fixed on a point a couple hundred yards distant. “You know where I grew up,” he says at last.

Cullen nods without speaking. Yeah, he knows more than he wants to about the commune where Bull was raised, and about the shitty things they taught their kids.

“You’ve got people you can look to,” Bull says, gaze still lost in the middle distance. “You can look around and say, 'I love my sisters, I love my brother, I love my parents. My parents love me. They love each other.’ You’ve got your whole life, all these people, all around you, saying 'I love you’ and showing you what that means. And yeah, sometimes it’s fucked up or twisted up or broken, but people use those words, and you know what they mean.”

“Usually,” Cullen says. It wasn’t supposed to come out as a whisper, but he doesn’t bother repeating himself louder.

“I don’t have any of that,” Bull says. “You say those words, and my brain just…can’t find that file. Nope, nothing here, concentrate and ask again.”

Cullen’s not sure what he’s feeling now, or even what he’s supposed to feel. The tightness in his chest could be fear, or it could be hope.

“But I thought…” Bull pauses. Takes a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “I thought maybe you could help me figure it out. Because I’ve been with a lot of people, and I never really cared beyond making sure the sex was great. It was always…okay, fine, whatever words make you happy. But I hear  _you_  say them, when Mia calls or when you see your mom or…whenever, and I think, 'I want to know what that means. I want that.’”

For a few painful seconds, Cullen tries unsuccessfully to make his throat work, until it becomes clear it’s hopeless. In the end, he gives up and just puts his hand on Bull’s knee, squeezing hard as he leans his forehead on Bull’s shoulder.

Bull’s hand touches the back of his head. Lightly at first, then pressing hard, fist tangling in his hair until Cullen can feel the trembling in Bull’s arm.

“Okay,” Cullen manages at last on a shaky breath. He pretends Bull’s grip on his hair is the reason his eyes are burning. “Okay.”

“I can’t do better than that,” Bull says in a voice that’s dead-level calm. The voice he uses when he’s anything but. “And if that’s not enough, I’ll underst-”

“It’s enough,” Cullen says, too fast. It’s his turn to breathe deep, though he has to do it a couple more times than Bull did. When he’s almost light-headed from too much oxygen, he presses his forehead harder against Bull’s shoulder and says the words again, enunciating each one. Saying it for both of them. “I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [on Tumblr](https://dragonflies-and-katydids.tumblr.com/post/138894017822/bull-x-cullen-with-things-you-said-while-we-were)


End file.
